Geography Awareness Week: Going To Germany

For the past few days, Lisa at 100 Years in America has been publishing articles in honor of Geography Awareness Week, and so far she has done posts on Croatia, Hungary, and Austria-Hungary. As a result, I have been inspired from these posts do a post myself on the country of Germany.

The official German name of Germany is Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Before 1871, Germany did not exist as country, and as you may know, Germany's borders as of now are go back to when Germany was reunited in 1990.

So, do you think you know a lot about Germany? Here are a couple of quizzes on Germany that you can try:

Cities of Germany

Germany's Bundesländer

Rivers of Germany

I hope you have fun with these quizzes. Enjoy!

Update on FamilySearch Lab's Record Search

I just happened to take a look at FamilySearch Lab's Record Search today, since it had been updated yesterday. A couple more records were added and the log in requirement has been removed. That's right; one does not have to log in into the Record Search to view the databases anymore.

What's Being Indexed by FamilySearch Indexing?

I happen to be a volunteer indexer for FamilySearch Indexing, and I thought I would just mention some of the records being indexed at the moment. A couple of records are:

• Indexes of the Irish BMD
• 1850 U. S. Federal Census

Of course there are other records being being indexed but the moment, these are two projects that have caught my attention. If you want to find out more information, click here.

Tombstone Maker Website

I just learned about this website from reading Randy Seaver's post. On this website, you can create your own tombstone epitaph.

I thought it was an interesting site, so I decided to create a tombstone marker. Here is mine:









Update: July 30, 2007:





I also created a tombstone for one of my ancestors. I know where he is buried (now, after a wild goose chase), but he doesn't have a grave marker. So, I made him one. Here it is:





Okay, I know the epitaph is not the most original, but this was the best I could think of. Maybe someday I will tell the story of how I found his grave, but it won't be today.

"MyHeritage Site"

I just learned about the "MyHeritage" genealgoy site a few days ago from reading an article on Randy Seaver's blog. You can read his article here: http://randysmusings.blogspot.com/2007/06/visiting-myheritage-data-portal.html#links .

I don't know how many people already knew about this site, but this was the first time I heard about. I didn't post anything on this website earlier because I was testing out the site. This site has a search engine that will search for a surname and up to ten variations of that surname that are listed on genealogy sites. The engine simplifies searching for genealogy information by only looking at genealogy websites. In order to use that search you have to register and download a program that will enable you to carry out the search. The search may take a while to complete as it is searching a very large number of genealogy websites, and it may take longer to finish if your computer runs slow. Unfortunately, my computer runs slow and everytime I tried to do a search my computer froze. So, I really have not been able to truly test this site out, which is frustrating to me. So, you may want to keep in mind if you do decied to use this search engine, your computer may run slow.

Of course there is more to this site than the search engine; I just haven't had chance to check out the rest of the site as a result of the problems I have had with my computer. If you are interested, here is the link to the site: http://www.myheritage.com/

Yet Another Rootsweb Website

I've just learned about another website from an e-mail. This Rootsweb site has many links to British Isles genealgoy and research. I haven't fully checked out this website yet because I haven't had time.

Here is the link to the site: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~lancsopc/RUS/Guide.htm

Another Genealogy Website and Resource

I learned about this website earlier today from an e-mail. It is a Rootsweb website, and it is a website where one can post their family group sheets. The site is divided into the fifty states of the United States and international. I've taken a brief look at the website, and I think it is a good resource even though I haven't found any connections yet.

Here is the URL address for the website: http://www.rootsweb.com/~usfgs

A Genealogy Website

I just thought I would mention this website. I've known about it for a little while, but I haven't done much exploring on the site because I haven't had much time. From what I have seen, the website looks to be a how-to-do genealogy and more. Also the website has videos on different genealogy topics.

Here's a link to the website: http://www.rootstelevision